With the advent of the desktop computer, manual manipulation of images has been replaced to a large extent by manipulation of data from which images may be reconstructed. An image may be scanned and the resulting data stored and manipulated by the computer operating as an image processing system. Various kinds of image processing systems employ image editing, such as cropping, or other image processing operations. A computer implemented image editor processes stored images in accordance with edit operations and stores the edited images electronically for later use or for use in other systems.
Electronic image editing may be performed on a conventional desk top computer implementing a graphical user interface. In respect to image cropping, a known method of electronically producing cropped images on a computer implementing a graphical user interface is typically accomplished by defining a crop region for an image, extrapolating destination information from the source image, and constructing the destination image from the extrapolated information. This method of cropping requires the image editor to recalculate the extrapolation each time the image is moved or zoomed, resulting in relatively long process times. There is a need, therefore, for providing more efficient image cropping functionality for use in a zooming graphical user interface.